1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus that is connected to external apparatus via a network, a control method thereof and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information processing apparatus that can be connected to a LAN network, such as printers and multifunction peripherals, are required to operate at lower power. Accordingly, a reduction in the power consumption required for communication with external apparatus via a network is increasingly becoming an issue. A control method using magic packets during communications has been presented as a solution to this. This is a method in which a device is usually set to off and the device is powered on upon receipt of a magic packet. With this method, it is possible to control the power supply to a physical layer (PHY) that connects a line between information processing apparatus. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-270470 proposes a method for controlling a PHY communication rate according to the total size of received data. This method focuses attention on the property in which the power consumption increases proportionately with the communication rate. Specifically, the power consumption is reduced by using a minimum required communication rate based on the total size of received data.
The conventional technique, however, has the following problems. For example, with the conventional technique, because the PHY rate is set according to the total amount of received data, the PHY rate is increased even when the reception rate is sufficiently lower than the PHY communication rate. Consequently, the PHY needs to exhibit undue performance, resulting in excessive power consumption. In addition, when packets having a size smaller than a receiving data size threshold are input in bursts, which is a condition for increasing the PHY rate, the PHY rate cannot be changed to high speed. Accordingly, when a large amount of data is received, there is a possibility that the packets might not be smoothly transmitted, and congestion might occur within the network. Because the rate is determined according only to the size of data transmitted from, for example, a single external apparatus, problems occur when concurrently communicating with a plurality of external apparatus. In other words, when concurrently communicating with a plurality of external apparatus, the data from the respective apparatus concurrently flow into a signal line, and therefore the rate appropriate to receive data from a single external apparatus is insufficient.